Clutterbuck was first performed at Wyndham’s Theatre, London, in 1946. It seems that there were perhaps five further productions and it is now, in effect, forgotten; the copy I read needed its gatherings cut open. But you could stage it today without changing a word and have audiences roaring with laughter.
Actually, to keep the audience on side, I would make some changes to one supporting character: the waiter at the start of the second act, described in the stage directions as “possibly a Philippino”; I’ll spare you the rest.
It’s a familiar setup: two friends and their newish husbands get to know perhaps too much about each other on a cruise. We see a crossword before we hear any dialogue: Julian is the first on stage and he “carries a crossword-puzzle book and a glass of brandy”.
What Levy does with crosswords is use them to tell us that Julian, a novelist, is a bit of a git: he uses his puzzle as an excuse not to discuss the idea that one of the other characters has had for a novel of their own. And Levy is, happily, one of those writers who tries a hand at clue-writing.
JULIAN (after a pause). Can anyone think of a fifteen-letter word beginning with P A? The clue is ‘misconception’.
JANE. How many letters?
JULIAN. Fifteen.
JANE. What do you say’s the clue?
JULIAN. Misconception.
JANE. I don’t know.
JULIAN. Thanks. (He pauses.) You haven’t got an india-rubber on you, have you?
A page or so later, the penny drops and Julian announces: “I’ve got it. Parthenogenesis. Oh, that’s very good. Misconception – parthenogenesis. Did you hear that, darling?”
He hasn’t quite finished the puzzle, having some “Assyrian bubble and squeak” to deal with but his clever-clever character is now established. The lovable Arthur, who had the idea for the book, is more straightforwardly comic and while both spouses, Deborah and Jane, are compelling characters, the scenes are designed to be stolen by the later appearance of the preposterous Melissa Clutterbuck.
This is how she speaks:
I just met the stewardoodle downstairs and he said Clutterbuck was frightfully worried about me this morning in case the storm had upset me last night because storms always scare the knicker-knackles off me, so he persuaded the captain to let him go ashore for me first thing in the pilot’s cutter so, of course, we just missed each other, and if that isn’t love I’ll take ginger wine.
Melissa’s presence is exhausting and hilarious; her husband provides laughs of another kind again, and in my dream staging, Julian would be played by a fine actor who was born Andrew Clutterbuck but was persuaded to use the stage name Lincoln.
See you at the opening night! In the meantime, I believe that Benn Levy is the only playwright to have also been a second-world-war spy, a Labour MP and a collaborator with Rodgers and Hart on a musical, Evergreen – and, the Dictionary of National Biography tells us, to have “established a well-known breed of friesian cattle”. Oh, and he wrote the dialogue for Britain’s first talkie.
Our next book
Suggestions for future book club reading are very welcome. In the meantime, we have our first piece of young adult fiction: from Charlie Higson’s Young Bond series, Double or Die.
Other puzzling books
Find a collection of explainers, interviews and other helpful bits and bobs at alanconnor.com
The Shipping Forecast Puzzle Book by Alan Connor, which is partly but not predominantly cryptic, can be ordered from the Guardian Bookshop
